


for all the world's a stage

by M_Leigh



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Leigh/pseuds/M_Leigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'They’re rehearsing every day, for hours and hours, which means that Eames has more than enough opportunities to get under Arthur’s skin. It’s not, he reflects, even that he wants to fuck him – he does, but that’s beside the point. He wants to drive him out of his mind, really, and doesn’t let him be bothered by the fact that he doesn’t know quite why that is.' Uh, Shakespeare!AU. Dom is Shakespeare, Eames is Burbage, and Arthur is the hot young thing they've hired to play Juliet. So, all of those things, minus ANY HISTORICAL ACCURACY WHATSOEVER.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for all the world's a stage

The most delightful thing about Robbie, Eames and Dom and the rest have always maintained, is the fact that he will never in his life look a day above sixteen. It’s a good quality in an actor – or it is, at least, if you’re an actor like Robbie, short-ish and pretty and too slender to be of much use doing anything else. Eames is fond of him in the way that he might be fond of a dog, if he had one. Mostly he appreciates his waif-like figure (he has told him this, on a number of occasions) and the high pitch of his voice, which is only sometimes grating.

“Ah, Robert my boy,” Eames says to him as he swans into the dressing room, twenty minutes late as per usual. “You tender flower. You shall be the Juliet to my incredibly more masculine Romeo.”

“No I bloody well won’t,” Robbie growls, and Eames’ eyebrows shoot up nearly to his hairline.

“Damn,” he says after a moment. “It’s finally happened. You’ve reached puberty.”

Robbie glowers at him. Dom is standing in the corner, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Well this puts us in quite a pickle,” Eames comments, and admires the especially prominent vein pulsing on Dom’s forehead.

“Indeed,” is all he manages in reply.

“I don’t suppose this Juliet of yours could be an unexpectedly manly thirteen-year-old girl?” Eames asks, ever the optimist.

“It would not be ideal,” Dom grits out, and Eames nods.

“Well, then,” he says, clapping his hands together. “It looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, then, don’t we?”

  
The auditions are abysmal.

Eames sits two rows behind Dom, tossing one of his knives in the air and catching it by the handle each time it comes down, rests his feet against the back of the seat in front of him, and generally being as obnoxious as possible. It’s possible, but not especially likely, that Dom will turn around at some point and kill him with the sheer force of irritation behind his eyes, but Eames figures it’s worth the risk. He’s insufferable to work with – and never let it be said that Eames is anything other than self-aware – and whatever young thing they hire to play alongside him had better bloody know it before signing up.

At the moment, though, it’s looking like Eames will be playing against _nobody_ , or perhaps against _Dom_ , just to capitalize on the absurdity of the situation, because every single boy who crosses the stage is fantastically incompetent at basically every level. It’s frankly mind-boggling. Eames would be impressed if he weren’t so irritated. Dom looks like he’s going to stab somebody any second now – or, at least, the set of his shoulders makes him look that way, since he’s had his head bowed practically into his lap for the past two hours.

The next boy has enough stubble for it to be visible from where Eames is sitting at the back of the theatre and his voice breaks four different times during his soliloquy. He’s trying to do Kate from the _Shrew_ and it would be deeply, deeply funny if it weren’t so utterly horrifying. Eames interrupts him before he’s finished, even though that’s not his job, because he just can’t bear it any longer.

“Get off my bloody stage,” he yells, and adds, “I’m completely serious; if you’re not off of that stage faster than I can blink I will stab you through the eye with this dagger” when instead of moving the boy just stops speaking and stands there stupidly, staring back at them. He scurries out faster than a mouse with a cat on its tail, and Eames hopes he falls in a ditch on the way home and never gets up again. Dom leans forward and rests his head on his knees.

Eames has never claimed to be an especially virtuous person. He leans back, and tosses his dagger up again and caught it without looking.

“Excuse me,” says the next boy, whose presence Eames is doing his best to thoroughly ignore. “Master Shakespeare? I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling the gentleman behind you to put his dagger away while I speak.”

“He would, in fact,” Eames tells him brightly, tossing it up once more. “Also you’re at least seven years too old for this, so you might as well get down from that stage now before your butchered reading of one of his speeches turns out to be the thing that finishes off our dear Master Shakespeare once and for all.”

He really is too old – he looks twenty-two, or maybe twenty-three; Eames has gotten good at guessing people’s ages – and he doesn’t at all resemble a woman, though he does have the build for the job. His voice isn’t deep but it isn’t high, either. Everything about him, in sum, is wrong.

“Eames, put it down,” Dom sighs, rubbing at his eyes, and Eames does so, but only because it looks like he’s having an awfully unpleasant day. The boy smiles at him tightly, and it’s an unpleasant expression if Eames has ever seen one.

“Please, grace us with your dulcet tones,” Eames tells the boy, smiling viciously back. He watches as the boy shifts his hips a little, sneers to himself when the boy does something to his shoulders – and then; oh, then he opens his mouth.

He’s Julia, from _Two Gentlemen_ , and Eames remembers very well Robbie’s Julia, the charm of his performance; Eames remembers because he played against him as Proteus. It had been one of Robbie’s finer moments, they all agreed. But there was Robbie, and then there was this boy on stage, and Eames knows deep in his gut that there is no comparing them, none at all; Eames is an actor and he knows his own kind. Julia is trying to catch the wisps of the torn-up letter from her lover and it doesn’t matter that the boy is up there in his waistcoat and breeches or that there is no letter, no scraps of paper for him to be gathering up; none of it matters because when the boy says, “Thus will I fold them one upon another, now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will” there is no boy at all, on the stage; there is merely Julia, and Julia alone.

In the silence that follows he straightens himself up a little and makes an almost fussy little bow. Dom is staring at him, and Eames is staring at him, and Eames mutters “oh bloody buggering _fuck_ ” because of course the boy he was going to have to pretend to be in love with every day for the indefinite future had to be the one he’s gone out of his way to antagonize before he’s even learned his name.

“You’re hired,” Dom says, sounding floored, and for a split second an expression of abject shock and something that might be wonder floods the boy’s face, unadulterated and pure, and then he shuts down again, murmurs his thanks, does another one of his fusty little bows – Eames is going to have to beat those out of him, he thinks to himself resignedly; that’s no way for an actor with any self-respect to behave – and looks back at Eames almost smugly. Eames sighs deeply, and resigns himself to his fate.

“What’s your name, boy?” Dom asks.

“Arthur,” the boy says, which is somehow perfect and deeply entertaining, all at once.

“Arthur,” Eames says, testing it out. “This is Master Dominic Cobb, alias William Shakespeare because he doesn’t want his wife to find out what he gets up to with the Lady Mallorie – you’ve heard of her – in his off hours, and also because while the man you see standing – sitting, whatever – before you may well be on his way to being the greatest playwright in the English language, he also has an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour when he’s had a few too many and finds himself in a seedy pub in the wee hours of the morning trying to come up with euphemisms for his cock.”

“Someday,” Dom says, “I am going to kill you.”

“You won’t ever, darling,” Eames tells him easily, leaning back and appreciating the carefully-crafted bland expression on young Arthur’s face. “I’m far too talented, and you’re shit with a knife.”

  
Eames makes it his objective almost immediately to make Arthur’s life as harrowing as possible. He wouldn’t go to such lengths – well, maybe he would – if it weren’t for the fact that he knows his antics drive Arthur absolutely _barmy_ despite how little Arthur reacts. Eames knows that Arthur ignores him deliberately because he thinks reacting will encourage him, but in fact it’s Arthur’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge Eames that keeps Eames pushing him so hard.

Yusuf and Ariadne – props and costumes, respectively – both find his antics deeply amusing, and he merely smiles beatifically at them when they cackle.

“The poor boy,” Yusuf says one afternoon, wiping tears out of the corners of his eyes and still panting with laughter, “he has no idea.”

“None,” Ariadne howled.

“No idea about _what_?” Eames asked, mildly, mostly to humour them.

“How very, very badly you want to get into his pants,” Ariadne pants.

“Well,” Yusuf amends, “up his skirt, really,” which only makes Ariadne laugh harder.

“You treat me with such disrespect,” Eames tells them, and Yusuf practically chokes. “Where’s my dignity flown to?”

“My friend,” he says, mock-serious, “you have never, never had any dignity.”

Eames can’t really argue with that.

They’re rehearsing every day, for hours and hours, which means that Eames has more than enough opportunities to get under Arthur’s skin. It’s not, he reflects, even that he wants to fuck him – he _does_ , but that’s beside the point. He wants to drive him out of his _mind_ , really, and doesn’t let him be bothered by the fact that he doesn’t know quite why that is.

They read through scene after scene, over and over and over again, and nothing is every quite right, as far as Dom’s concerned; it’s all that one degree _off_ from the play he’s envisioned, and Eames has worked with him enough times by this point to know that something is always off with Dom, every time, and that by opening day it’s not, anymore, because Dom will have located it and fixed it and even though the play never seems anything but serviceable to Eames before that point, it never fails to be _better_ after Dom’s tinkered with it. Eames doesn’t mind having to learn new lines the day before they’re scheduled to open because Dom is a genius, and though Eames knows all his dirty little secrets and has no problems whatsoever using them against him all the time, he also knows that Dom is a _genius_ , and genius is something that even Eames doesn’t fuck with.

Arthur, though, Arthur isn’t off at all. He starts off slowly, modestly; there’s something entirely too subtle about his performance in the early days of the rehearsal that Eames gives him shit about endlessly, because it should be clear to anybody, he thinks, that this Juliet character is about as far from _subtle_ and _modest_ as it is possible to be. He’s playing Romeo with all of the flamboyance he can muster without making himself feel silly, or stupid, because that’s what Romeo is, young and outrageous and foolish but never silly, never stupid. And Juliet is the same, isn’t she – well, she’s a woman (or a girl, really), so she can’t be as wild and impetuous as her suitor, but she’s still mad for him, and not just for him but for _life_ , for _everything_. Eames loves both of them, and loves Dom for killing them, because he knows from personal experience that people who are like that at thirteen, or fourteen, or sixteen, are always hard and disillusioned by the time they hit twenty-five.

It’s frustrating, at first, the way Arthur holds back from him, but the weeks pass, and Eames realizes that the way Arthur is playing the role is changing, that the performance is changing. Arthur’s pulling more and more of himself into it, every day, and Eames finds himself looking forward to watching him, because each time they do a scene Arthur does it differently, does it _better_. Eames watches, and watches, and wonders whether Arthur is thinking about any of this, or whether it just comes to him naturally. He can’t tell, not for the life of him.

“Eames,” Ariadne calls him, sing-song, one afternoon, “the show’s about to begin in the dressing room, if you’re interested. Oh, wait, I _know_ you are.”

“Pardon?” Eames asks, looking up from his copy of the script.

“She’s fitting Arthur for his dresses today,” Yusuf says without looking up from the pile of fencing foils he’s sorting through on the floor. Eames practically hurtles out of the room.

“Hello, dollface,” Eames purrs at Arthur moments later, pretending with what he thinks is a considerable amount of success that he hasn’t just sprinted at full-tilt down the hallway.

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “What’s he doing here?” he asks Ariadne, and she makes an indecipherable sound but is spared from having to respond by the pins in her mouth.

“I’m here to enjoy the view,” Eames smirks, and Arthur just raises his eyebrows. He’s got his tunic and leggings on, and Ariadne is pulling a silk, ruby dress over him. It doesn’t fit properly at all, but it will by the time she’s done with it; Ariadne’s something of a wizard with clothes in general, but with the construction of these impossibly fancy gowns she’s nothing short of miraculous.

“What would you do,” Arthur asks so dryly it almost hurts, “if we were all actually young ladies?”

“Thankfully, we’ll never know,” Eames tells him.

“Don’t mind him, Arthur,” Ariadne says when she’s taken the last pin out of her mouth. “You’re about a thousand times better at standing still for a fitting than he is, I can tell you that much.”

“Slander,” Eames counters cheerfully, because of course she’s right; he finds standing still _impossible_.

“Why red?” he asks after a moment. Arthur blinks at him, apparently surprised by the fact that Eames has asked a legitimate question. Eames leers at him a little just for show and turns back to Ariadne, who’s pulling fabric together at the back of Arthur’s waist. “The blood won’t show up properly, you know.”

“I know,” she says thoughtfully, splaying her hand across the small of Arthur’s back clinically. “But…” she trails off, cocking her head to one side. “I don’t know, really,” she admits finally. “It just seemed like the right colour."

Eames looks at Arthur in the dress, really takes him in.

“It does,” he agrees thoughtfully, and Arthur sends him a strange look. Eames smirks a little at the dull flush spreading up his neck and across his cheeks, and Arthur scowls again, and everything is back to normal.

That night at the pub Eames makes the decision to abandon Dom to his drunken ramblings (they are spectacularly incoherent anyway, something about donkeys and _a_ wall _, Eames, don’t you see the comedic significance of the_ wall, and Eames really doesn’t) and takes advantage of the fact that Arthur has a tendency to sit alone in the corner without talking to anybody, and swoops down onto the bench next to him so quickly that Arthur can’t really get away.

“What do you want,” he asks almost wearily, and Eames thinks that he’s far too young to sound so jaded, and tells him so.

Arthur’s mouth twists sourly.

“I’m not so young, Master Eames,” he says, and Eames is by this point familiar with the snide, sarcastic tilt to the way he says _Master_ before his name. He only does it to annoy him, when he really wants Eames to leave him alone, but Eames isn’t about to do anything of the sort.

“No,” Eames says thoughtfully, instead. “I suppose you aren’t. But I’m older than you are, pet, and I always will be, which is all that I need, really.”

Arthur snorts, but his expression hardly changes at all. It’s extraordinary, Eames thinks, how tight and guarded his face is – his whole body, in fact – when on stage Eames has watched him cycle from overjoyed to heartbroken to desperate, all in one day. All in a matter of hours.

“You are utterly fascinating,” he tells him, because he is phenomenally drunk. Arthur raises an eyebrow.

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls,” Arthur says calmly before he gets up and leaves, and Eames feels suddenly that there was something important there, something incredibly important that he’s missed, but his brain’s not working properly; he can’t quite work it out –

And now he’s distracted, because Dom’s gotten up on the counter and is declaiming something truly awful about a sweet and lovely wall, and Eames decides that for the good of everybody involved it would be wise to get them both out of there, and quick.

There are two parts of the play that Eames loves best, though he’d never admit either of them to anybody. The first is the bit where Romeo and Juliet meet, and fall in love, but he doesn’t love that part because he it means he gets to kiss Arthur every day (though he doesn’t complain about that). He loves it because he loves the feeling of Arthur’s hand pressed against his, of Arthur’s long calloused fingers against his own. He’s dying to know what Arthur’s life was before he attracted the attention of the great William Shakespeare. Everybody has a story, Eames knows, and he wants to know them all in an abstract way – it’s how he does his job, after all – but Arthur’s he’s really, properly curious about. Arthur’s he wants to _memorize_.

And anyway, he loves Arthur’s hands. He loves the rough, hard expanses on his palm, because they are the physical remnants of a life Eames will probably never know anything about. He loves them, and he loves the scene.

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” Juliet tells him, mouth curving almost wickedly, but not quite, “which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” She’s quite a tart, that Juliet, Eames thinks, and it only makes him more fond of her.

Arthur looks ravishing in the gown Ariadne has fixed for him, of course, but he doesn’t exactly look like a woman. He doesn’t look much like a man, either; she’s done a good enough job with the makeup, and the wig, and the dress. But Robbie had been genuinely pretty in a way that Arthur is not. Arthur is beautiful, of course, but not _pretty_. But none of it matters, because when Arthur is acting he is no longer himself. There is nothing about him that is recognizable. His eyes change, and the way that his face moves changes, and his voice changes. Eames has no idea whether he does the same thing, whether he sheds his Eames-ness when he’s on the stage. He’s never thought about it before. He’s only memorized his lines, and delivered them as honestly as he could. He finds himself hoping that he has a fraction of the ability Arthur has to disappear, but he doesn’t try to chase it. He’s not sure he would recognize it if he did.

The other part of the play that he likes especially is the ending, when he’s lying there on the tomb next to Juliet, for all intents and purposes dead, and listens to her lamenting his death. He never sees her driving the false dagger into her chest, or the wine-coloured cloth that curls over her fingers to mimic blood, but he feels it all, and then feels Arthur’s body pitch down slowly across his, and they lie there, warm and solid and listening to each other breathe while the Montagues and the Capulets say their final lines, and the moral is delivered to the audience. Eames doesn’t pay any attention to them. He lies prone, and keeps his eyes closed, and sometimes curls his right hand, the one the audience won't be able to see, against whatever part of Arthur he can reach: his hip, the side of his ribcage beneath the corset of the dress. And Arthur always lets him, but Eames thinks that’s more Juliet’s doing than Arthur’s, when it comes right down to it.

  
Opening day Dom is an absolute fucking wreck, as per usual, and Eames pats his back as he mutters to himself, also as per usual. Apparently his lady-friend is going to be in the audience today, but Eames doesn’t ask questions. He’s afraid if he mentions her something will actually explode in Dom’s head, and that won’t be productive for anybody.

Eames is more surprised to find Arthur pacing back and forth in the dressing room. Ariadne sends him a haggard look and Eames drags him away, to the squat little room where Yusuf keeps the props they’re not using for the production stored. There’s not much room to pace, but Arthur manages it anyway, and Eames watches him from where he’s leaning against a trunk full of doublets and dresses they used for _Richard III_.

It’s almost endearing, how incredibly brittle Arthur looks at this moment – no, Eames admits to himself, it _is_ endearing. It might not be if he were at all genuinely concerned that Arthur would fuck up that afternoon, in front of everybody in the theatre, but Eames isn’t worried about that. Arthur will be fine.

“Arthur,” he tells him, “you’ll be fine.”

Arthur stops pacing and turns to look at him. It looks to Eames as though he can’t decide whether to glare or not.

Eventually he settles on merely scowling.

“You don’t know that,” he mutters, and Eames is reminded suddenly that Arthur is in fact a very young man, for all that he doesn’t act like one. There’s a tense set to his face and a panic in his eyes that wouldn’t look home on an older man. Eames looks at him and tries to memorize him as he is, right now, so that when Arthur is older and wiser he’ll be able to remember what he was like when he was young and uncertain.

“I do,” Eames tells him calmly, folding his arms. “You’re going to feel like you want to vomit for the next three hours, and then you’ll get out in front of everybody and you’ll forget about yourself entirely and then it will be over faster than you can imagine.”

Arthur is watching him with a strange, guarded expression on his face, one that Eames can’t quite place. “You’ll go out there and for a moment you’ll be terrified,” he continues, “when you see everybody standing there, gazing up at you. But then you’ll remember that you aren’t who you think you are, who you’ve always thought you were; you’ll remember you’re actually thirteen years old, and a girl, and that you’re hopelessly horny and madly in love with a boy, and then you’ll just be her instead of you. And you’ll be brilliant at it, love, because you’ve been consistently brilliant for weeks and it’s engrained in you now.”

Arthur looks deeply confused, and even younger than he had before, and Eames decides that he had better leave him alone for a little while before the madness begins. He claps him on the shoulder, and walks out.

  
“O, happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die,” Juliet cries above him, and then she topples forward, clumsily, and she is Arthur again, and Eames feels the thundering, raging pulse of Arthur’s heart against his, and reaches for Arthur’s hand, and squeezes, once, before letting go.

  
That night they get roaringly, _smashingly_ drunk, to the point that Eames isn’t certain that Dom will ever be able to walk straight ever again, but they are all stupidly giddy, even Arthur, who is buzzing beneath the tense set of his limbs.

(Eames can admit to himself, in a way that he can’t sober, everything he wants to do to Arthur, and _why_.)

Instead he settles for sitting too close to him on the bench in the corner, and watching Arthur’s eyes shine.

“I told you,” Eames murmurs, “I told you you would be brilliant.”

Arthur’s a little drunk, too, it seems, because he turns a lovely shade of red at that, and Eames grins predatorially.

“Is it always like this?” he asks, and Eames takes the rare shard of openness he’s been granted and holds it close.

“No,” he says, honestly. “If it were none of us would ever sleep.” The corners of Arthur’s mouth turn up, and Eames leans forward impulsively to pick up the hand that’s closest to him. He turns it over and inspects the calluses.

“Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,” he mutters. “I think you must have been something fascinating before we found you.”

“ _I_ found _you_ ,” Arthur corrects him primly.

“Semantics,” Eames tells him. “Come on, then,” he adds after a pause. “Out with it.”

“No,” Arthur says mulishly. Oh, he really is drunk. Eames is delighted.

“Come _on_ ,” he whines, resting his head on his hands and gazing up at Arthur with his eyes at their widest.

Arthur’s a pleasant shade of pink, and Eames watches as his eyes flick from Eames’ face down to his hands and back again around ten times. Eames is patient. He will wait.

“I was a stable boy,” Arthur says quietly, curling his hands together. “I guess the calluses haven’t gone away yet.”

The idea of Arthur hauling out muck is so utterly ludicrous that Eames can’t help but laugh, though he feels awful when he sees Arthur shut down in exactly the way that he hates. He reaches out a hand without thinking to touch the side of Arthur’s face, and Arthur starts violently, shocked.

“I’m not laughing at you, pet,” Eames tells him, and somehow he’s telling the truth. He’s laughing at how stupid the world is, that somebody like Arthur – somebody as brilliant and beautiful and sickeningly gifted as _Arthur_ – might have been doomed to the life of a stable boy for the rest of his life. He’s laughing because that’s not funny at all.

But now Arthur just looks afraid, and confused, so Eames lets his hand drop back down to the table.

“I’m not laughing at you,” he repeats as seriously as he can in his present state, and he can’t tell whether or not Arthur believes him. He’s not sure Arthur can tell.

  
Several hours later they are even more intoxicated – they are just _stupendously drunk_ – and Eames drags Arthur out to the alley behind the pub so that they can practice bowing, which seems suddenly to be of critical importance, because at the end of the performance Arthur made his stiff little bow when Eames swept one arm across his waist and let his head dip almost to the ground, and it’s unbecoming for them to look so unmatched.

“Like so,” Eames says, and demonstrates as flamboyantly as possible, and Arthur is actually _giggling_ , unless Eames is hallucinating that – it’s entirely possible that he’s hallucinating that, actually – and then he makes Arthur do the same, and he does, as fluidly and ridiculously as Eames could possibly have hoped he might, and when he comes up he’s red and grinning a little bashfully and there are still flakes of stage makeup around his eyes and caked near his ear, and Eames is in love.

  
The next morning they are spectacularly hung over, and Arthur just glares and avoids Eames like the plague.

“I don’t know what you did,” Ariadne says primly, because she’s the only responsible one of them, “but I’m sure you deserve it.”

“Nghhh,” Eames groans, and tries to keep the sunlight out of his eyes. “Didn’t do _anything_.”

“I’m sure,” Ariadne says drily, and yanks him up as she fastens his doublet. She is, Eames decides, an evil, evil woman.

The ensuing performance is not a disaster, but it is not their finest hour. Luckily, Dom is not in a state to notice, or care.

  
For weeks they do this, this play: they perform it, they live it; it is everything to them. Romeo gazes at Juliet every day, and falls in love with her; Eames gazes at Arthur and falls in love with him, with the sharp lines of him, with the rhythm of his breath, of his heart, of his blood. Eames presses his hand against Arthur’s, and his lips against Arthur’s, and when the play is over Arthur bows stiffly, and Eames bows deeply, because he feels humbled, not because he is proud.

  
It is a very successful play. The public is enraptured. Attendance is through the roof – metaphorically speaking, of course; they haven’t got a roof.

Dom gets bored.

“I’m going to write a comedy,” he announces to Eames one night at the pub, and he’s not even particularly drunk yet, so Eames knows he’s serious. He’s got that look in his eye, anyway, the Genius Look, so Eames just takes a sip of his ale and waits.

“A pair of lovers,” Dom muses. “But they get confused…” He pauses. “They’re in a forest,” he says slowly, “at night. And – there’s a supernatural element, right. The king and queen of the fairies, who’re messing them around. Or – the king’s messing them around, with…” He’s looking at Eames now, and Eames does not like the sudden glint in his eye. “With his _sprite_ ,” he adds gleefully, and _oh_ , Eames thinks glumly, _this will go nowhere good_.

  
“ _Romeo & Juliet_ is done,” Dom announces one morning, practically bouncing with excitement. “You’ve all got two days off, and then we’re going to start rehearsing for _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.”

“You need to have auditions before we start rehearsing,” Eames tells him. “We haven’t got a Hermia, or a Helena, or a Titania.”

Arthur frowns. “Wait –” he begins, and Eames sighs.

“You’re Puck,” Dom says dismissively, and frowns. He does this often; it makes him look incredibly constipated. Eames has considered telling him, but ultimately saying nothing is much more entertaining.

There’s a moment of fraught silence, and then Arthur says, “ _Oh_ ,” and when Eames looks over at him his eyes are wide and he looks genuinely surprised.

“Well he wasn’t going to waste you on one of those tarts,” Eames points out, because they _are_ tarts, all of them, and Arthur is above that. He grins lasciviously at Arthur more out of habit than anything, and adds, “You’re going to be my little _forest sprite_ , pet.”

Arthur goes stony-faced, but the flush really gives him away. Eames has become very attached to that flush. He beams at him with a brightness he doesn’t really feel.

Arthur has been avoiding him, and continues to avoid him, and it is driving Eames utterly _mad_ because he can’t think of anything he did, really, that would have invoked such ire. He can’t _remember_ molesting Arthur, anyway, and he’s pretty sure he would remember something like that, no matter how drunk he was at the time.

Besides, Eames may be many things, but he’s not the type to throw himself on somebody who is so obviously uninterested. He says so, petulantly, to Yusuf, who snorts and rolls his eyes but does not elaborate, which Eames finds incredibly irritating.

“You’re a twat, Yusuf,” he tells him, which only makes Yusuf chuckle more, which was not Eames’ intention. Eames pokes him with a foil in retaliation, but Yusuf ignores him, so he gives up on his project of bothering him and goes back to learning his lines.

It’s always bothered him, the way Dom can just shift from one thing to the next. Dom acts sometimes but he doesn’t live the plays the way that Eames does, and the way that Arthur must; when he’s finished the play and they’ve performed it for a week it’s over for him, and he starts thinking of the next thing. When he’s got that worked out well enough, and when they’ve made enough money on the last play to be respectable, he shuts it down mercilessly, and forgets about it. Eames does, too, eventually – someday, he knows, Romeo will be a faint, albeit pleasant memory – but right now, in this moment, he is as much Romeo as himself. But Romeo is gone, suddenly, and to Eames it’s like a death.

He also gets to spend considerably less time on stage with Arthur this time around, which he resents. So he’s irritated at Dom for that, as well, and at Yusuf for laughing at him, and at Ariadne on principle, and most of all he is phenomenally irritated at Arthur for refusing to look at him for _no reason at all_.

Eames finds himself doing a lot of moping, in-between rehearsing. He is well aware that it is not flattering, but he doesn’t care.

There is, at least, lots of new blood to distract him. He’s incredibly amused by the antics of all of the young men they’ve hired to play the women – they are practically _pubescent_ , Eames thinks with glee – and they remind him of Robbie, back in the day, when Robbie was fifteen and overeager and had no facial hair. Robbie’s playing Lysander, now, which is utterly horrifying and makes Eames feel _old_. These new boys are like a different species, and that’s strange, but Eames finds himself thinking of them fondly anyway. They know so little about what their lives are going to be.

Arthur doesn’t associate with them, and he certainly doesn’t associate with Eames. Eames thinks he probably doesn’t associate with anybody, which is almost more depressing than thinking of him being with anybody but Eames, but not quite.

  
On the morning of opening day, Eames goes out back to take a piss and finds David, who’s playing Hermia, doubled over and vomiting spectacularly all over the ground. It is, all things considered, not the most beguiling scene Eames has ever had the pleasure of witnessing. It also smells _foul_. He sighs and goes forward to pat David on the back wearily.

“Chin up, thatta boy,” he says. “Don’t go soiling your clothes; Ariadne’ll have some kind of fit and then we’ll _all_ be doomed.”

“Sorry,” David whispers, wiping at his mouth.

“Not at all,” Eames says almost gently, because he remembers what it was like to be this young and afraid. He pats him on the back again, and David shudders convulsively.

“Really,” Eames says, “ _don’t_ –”

There’s a sound behind him, and Eames turns around to see what it is, and sees Arthur standing there, gazing at them with an indecipherable expression on his face.

 _Can you help me out here?_ Eames mouths at him, desperately, and Arthur looks almost repulsed for a moment before turning on his heel and vanishing around the corner.

“Of course,” Eames says to nobody at all, hopelessly. “Of course.”

Behind him, David starts retching again.

“Bugger all this,” Eames growls, and steps out of the way, but not fast enough.

  
“Okay,” he says once he’s barged into the dressing room, which is blessedly empty of anybody but Arthur and Ariadne, who looks startled to see him. “You,” he said, pointing at Arthur, “had better explain what the bloody hell is going on here, because I am _finished_. This has gone on for _too long_ , and I’ve got Hermia’s vomit all over my shoes, and really, enough is enough.”

“Really,” Ariadne huffs. “You’re going to do this _here_?”

“You’re welcome to leave,” Eames tells her petulantly, and though her eyebrows rise she does just that, though not before muttering, “I can’t wait until I alter your next costume, Master Eames” on her way out the door.

Arthur is gazing at him stonily, and there are only hours before they have to be out there, and Eames wishes suddenly that he could be there _now_ , that he could be somebody other than he is. But he can’t, that’s just the problem.

“Christ, Arthur,” he says. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what is going on in your brain, so why don’t you take this opportunity to enlighten me, hmm?”

If possible, this makes Arthur even angrier.

“What is it?” Eames asks shortly. “Is it that you think I’m going to – molest you in the night, or something? Jesus – Arthur – I’m a right twat, all right, I know I am, but I’m not actually _vile_. I don’t generally make a habit of throwing myself on men who are clearly not interested, so if this is just some sexual panic you can cut it out right away.”

Arthur, to Eames’ considerable surprise, looks more confused than irritated.

“I –” he starts, and then pauses. “I’m not –” he tries, and stops again. “You’re not nearly as complicated as you think,” he says finally, bitterly, and Eames is mystified because he’s really never thought of himself as complicated, and that’s the honest truth.

“It must be very easy,” Arthur continues, and there’s something harsh and pained in his voice that makes Eames want to shut him up by any means necessary, because it’s an awful, awful sound and it’s not something Eames every wants to have to listen to again. “To make us love you –”

“I’m sorry,” Eames says, genuinely floored, “ _what_?”

“To make us love you,” Arthur repeats bitterly, voice cracking over the words. “All of these – _boys_ –”

Eames is honestly too shocked to say anything at all.

“It’s awful,” Arthur finishes quietly, looking broken somehow. “You never think about how awful it is.”

And then he runs away.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Eames says to the empty space of the room, and sits down on Ariadne’s stool, hard.

Unfortunately, it’s not strong enough to support his weight.

“Of course,” Eames says to the ceiling. “Of _course_.”

  
He’s fairly certain that his Oberon is the worst performance he’s ever done in front of an audience. They don’t seem to mind, but Dom stares at him like he’s grown two heads when he comes off the stage after his first scene and doesn’t even have anything to say to him, just stares, mystified. Ariadne pats his shoulder almost sympathetically, and Arthur doesn’t look at him at all – except, of course, when they’re on stage together, when he has to.

Arthur’s acting is just as perfect as it always is, which, if anything, makes Eames’ worse.

At the end of the play – and oh, he has never been more grateful to be finished with anything – he stands in the wings and watches Arthur deliver his speech, the crowning jewel of the play. “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended,” he tells the audience, who are all enraptured by him, by the otherworldliness of his voice and his eyes and his body, “that you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.” Eames, though, Eames can feel the underlying agony there, and it makes him physically _pained_ , and when Arthur finishes with “Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends” he wants to vomit.

Arthur carefully doesn’t look at him while they take their bows, but he bows fully, all the way to the ground, and Eames notices.

He doesn’t wait for Ariadne to get them out of their costumes and makeup before grabbing Arthur and dragging him bodily to the storage room. Arthur is disturbingly obedient; Eames would rather he put up some kind of fight, _resisted_ him a little, but he’s just limp. Eames slams the door behind them and fumbles with the extinguished torch in the sconce, and finally manages to catch a spark and light it. Arthur’s face is inhuman in the weird firelight and Eames can’t imagine what he himself looks like. Oberon, he supposes.

“Arthur,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. He sounds strangled, and not at all like himself, and Arthur looks achingly young, beneath the paint on his face.

“ _Arthur_ ,” he says again, because it’s all he _can_ say, and he reaches out and catches one of Arthur’s hands with his own, lets his fingers rest against the inside of Arthur’s delicate wrist, where the blood rushes, and spreads his hand open, looking at the calluses again. They’re mostly faded now, but not entirely; Eames wonders if they’ll be there forever, a physical reminder of what Arthur used to be, and isn’t any longer.

“Darling,” he begins finally, “I think you have some very sordid and very unfair story about me worked out in that beautiful head of yours.”

Arthur is shaking beneath him, and he reminds Eames of a horse, a colt, just born. He laces his strong fingers through Arthur’s slender ones, and holds him there, tethered to reality.

“Everybody knows about you,” Arthur says in a small voice, and Eames wants desperately to laugh at the absurdity of this, at the absurdity of everything, but he doesn’t. He holds it in.

“Everybody doesn’t know me, in fact,” he corrects, and still Arthur won’t listen to him, so he reaches up with his other hand and rubs at the paint spread magnificently across Arthur’s sternum, and Arthur shakes.

“The first time I saw you,” Eames muses, still rubbing his thumb against Arthur’s flesh, “I thought you were the most incredible thing I had ever seen.” Arthur lets out a long, shaking breath, and Eames spreads his hand out against his chest, pinning him to the wall. He’s warm, and his heart is beating.

“And for the record,” he adds, “I haven’t fucked any of the boys since I was one of them myself, all got up in a dress. And I have certainly never been in love with any of them.” He’s never really been in love with anybody, not really, not like this, but some things you have to keep for yourself.

“You’re going to be much greater than I am, someday, pet,” Eames murmurs, looking at the patch of skin he’s cleared of paint on Arthur’s chest. “You are already, I suspect.”

And then Arthur is shaking his head, and leaning forward so desperately that Eames almost doesn’t know what to think, and Arthur takes his face in his hands and kisses him like a man with nothing to lose, like a man who’s found himself, finally, for the first time in his life.

Eames presses against him, presses him into the wall, and decides he’s never going to let him go, never, not for the rest of their lives.

  
They’re going to be everything, Eames thinks, they’re going to be everybody – everybody that Dom can imagine – and he’s right, he’s right, they’re going to be Beatrice and Benedick and Brutus and Cassius and Hamlet and Horatio and Othello and Iago and Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and they are going to be them, they are going to be Eames, and Arthur, and Eames is going to wake up in the morning and touch the delicate bones of Arthur’s shoulders, and Arthur will blink hazily up at him, and sometimes he’ll smile, and sometimes he won’t, but either way they’re going to know exactly who they are, and then they’ll go to the theatre, and each of them will be somebody else.

  
 **fin.**


End file.
